Month: August 2022

Ever hear of the term “kill them with kindness”? To kill someone with kindness means to cause discomfort to someone by treating him/her in a way that is extremely kind and helpful. This article describes what is meant by killing with kindness and it gives some examples. One example features a couple with a baby walking down the aisle in an airplane during boarding. The other passengers express visible disgust that this couple is bringing a baby on board knowing that the baby is likely to cry during the flight and disturb others. Some passengers do not even care whether the couple hears their rude comments. Instead of reacting with retaliation, the father goes around handing out earplugs to the other passengers, apologizing to each person for any noise that may occur during the flight. These acts of kindness can make the other passengers feel guilty for showing such visible disgust a moment earlier because the father is making it obvious that he and the mother genuinely do not want to disturb anyone.

When people are mean, they usually expect a retaliatory response. Refraining from being mean back is one thing, but responding with acts of kindness can catch the mean person by surprise. Sometimes these acts of kindness can reveal how bad the person’s behavior is and can be more likely to get the person to change his/her behavior than if we were to return meanness with meanness.

Sometimes killing with kindness comes with ulterior motives, but often in these cases no harm is done to the other person in the process.

Killing with Fake Kindness

Killing with kindness is something that a victim may do to a perpetrator in order to expose how bad the perpetrator’s behavior is and soften the perpetrator’s aggressive demeanor. Killing with fake kindness, by contrast, is something that perpetrator may do to the victim. Killing with fake kindness not only comes with corrupt motives, but also does potential harm to the other person.

Killing with fake kindness, here, means to put on a display of kindness for others to see with the intended effect of making oneself look like the kind and thoughtful one and making the other person look like the mean one. Sometimes it can be outright cruel. It is a perversion of the traditional killing with kindness concept. It is not overcoming evil with good, but rather overcoming good with evil by putting on an appearance of goodness.

Example: Two girls named Jen and Jill are good friends, but Jen is secretly jealous of Jill because she has a crush on Jill’s boyfriend. Jen decides to tell Jill’s boyfriend a lie — that Jill has a venereal disease and that Jill has been cheating on him. Jen’s plan works, and Jill’s boyfriend breaks up with her. Jill eventually finds out what happened, though, and she explains to Jen that she does not like her anymore. Instead of leaving Jill alone, Jen decides to “kill Jill with kindness”. Jen showers Jill with empty and insincere compliments, which Jill finds to be irritating. Whenever Jill accidently drops something, Jen picks it up for her. Despite how obvious it is that Jill does not like Jen anymore, Jen tells Jill in front of others that she still wants to be friends and that she forgives Jill. Jen tells others that she still likes Jill as a person, and that Jill is the one who doesn’t like her. Meanwhile, it should not be surprising that Jen still likes Jill. Jill did nothing to Jen that has given Jen any reason to dislike her. Jen is the one who did something wrong to Jill.

In the example above, note that Jen never owns responsibility for how wrong she was telling lies about Jill to her boyfriend. The acts of kindness from Jen are for the purpose of making herself look like the kind and loving one and making Jill look like the mean and intolerant one. Furthermore, Jen makes no efforts to repair the harm she has done to Jill, such as explaining to the boyfriend that those things she told him about Jill were actually lies.

Another Example

Marsha keeps getting harassed by her busy-body colleague, Nancy. Nancy sometimes criticizes how Marsha does certain things, and many of Nancy’s criticisms are ignorant and unwarranted. In her self-righteousness, Nancy is convincing herself that she is a great person who is only trying to help. In reality, Nancy is only criticizing Marsha to make herself look like the more competent colleague. On some other occasions, Nancy teases Marsha for having a swollen face. Marsha explains to Nancy that she is on medication for a serious illness, and a swollen face is one of the side effects. Nancy does not seem to care and still thinks it is funny. On still other occasions, when Marsha is speaking her mind at a meeting, Nancy tries to discredit Marsha in front of the group. Over time, Marsha grows to dislike Nancy and wants nothing to do with her. A dispute ensues, and the other colleagues are aware of it.

Nancy decides to handle the dispute by “killing Marsha with kindness”. So Nancy does a bunch of nice things for Marsha in view of the other colleagues. Even though Marsha wants nothing to do with Nancy and just wants to be left alone, Nancy follows Marsha around while talking — in her sweet silky voice — about how she just wants to be friends and cannot bare to part with someone on bad terms. She buys Marsha a bouquet of flowers, tries to do unsolicited favors for Marsha and sometimes places her hand on Marsha’s arm in an affectionate manner, which makes Marsha squirm away in response. When people are not looking Nancy continues her round of subtle quiet insults, backhanded compliments and microaggressions.

“I am sorry for whatever it is that I did” says Nancy. This apology is more like a back-handed apology. The “whatever it is that I did” part of this apology is Nancy’s way is playing dumb and acting like she has no clue what she did, but is so “kind” that she is willing to apologize anyway. While this apology is Nancy’s way of exalting herself for being so kind, it also serves as a harsh put-down to Marsha. It implies that Marsha is angry at Nancy for no known reason, thereby making Marsha look unreasonable and angry with somebody over nothing.

By being so kind to Marsha in front of other people, Nancy is attempting to make herself look like the kind one, and make Marsha look like the mean and grumpy one. When Nancy is mean to Marsha, it is too subtle for others to notice. As Marsha flinches in response to Nancy’s unsolicited “affectionate” physical touching, Nancy attempts to make Marsha look like the stubborn one who is not willing to get along. Nancy is petite, blonde and innocent-looking. She speaks always in a sweet, silky voice such that people may feel bad saying or thinking anything bad about her. She insists that she did nothing wrong, and does not know why Marsha just wants to find fault in her. Meanwhile, Marsha is left in a state of torment. If Nancy’s kill-with-fake-kindness tactics are effective enough, then Marsha may become convinced that she is just too sensitive and too grumpy, and needs to lighten up.

The General Pattern

The killing-with-fake-kindness pattern generally starts with the evildoer doing bad things to the victim that may go unnoticed by others. A dispute ensues between the evildoer and the victim. Next, the evildoer showers the victim with acts of kindness for others to see in an attempt to make him/herself look like the kind one, and make the victim look like the mean and intolerant one. Such behavior has the façade of overcoming evil with good, but in reality is just another form of overcoming good with evil. If effective enough, these tactics may even trick the victim into thinking that he/she is the mean and intolerant one, thereby making the victim feel guilty when acknowledging the wrongs done against him/her.

I wonder if women are more effective when killing with fake kindness. In culture, women are often expected to be thoughtful, empathetic, kind, more emotionally intelligent. Some women may mold themselves to meet these cultural standards on the outside while having evil intentions on the inside. Because women generally look more innocent than men do, women’s attempts at fake kindness may be more convincing to outside observers.

It should be obvious that acts of kindness do not replace holding oneself responsible for one’s previous bad behaviors, nor do acts of kindness absolve one from responsibility for one’s previous bad behaviors. Only admitting to the wrongdoing and giving a sincere apology suffices.

We have all known at least one person who is socially inept. Socially inept people sometimes say something that offends someone or do something that makes someone feel uncomfortable. They do not intend to cause such offense or discomfort to another person, but they sometimes do so anyway because they are lacking in social graces. Sometimes socially inept people can be mistaken as mean because of the unintended hurt that they can cause.

So when someone hurts another person, how do we know whether the hurtful behavior is a result of social ineptitude or a manifestation of evil inside of someone’s heart?

Evil can be mistaken for social ineptitude

Someone can be both evil and socially inept. Sometimes when people have a reputation for being socially inept or socially awkward, and they say something hurtful or offensive, there is a tendency to attribute most or all offensive/hurtful behavior to the social awkwardness without any consideration to the possibility that some of the bad behavior may be a manifestation of evil in someone’s heart. Indeed, people sometimes like to give others the benefit of the doubt, but as discussed in the Faux Peacekeepers post, giving someone the benefit of the doubt can have devastating consequences.

Below are two ways that one can tell whether hurtful behavior is caused by social ineptitude or evil inside someone’s heart:

1) How does the person react when he/she finds out that his/her behavior hurt or offended someone? Does he/she react with remorse? Or does he/she figure that because he/she did not mean to hurt anyone, it is the other person’s problem and not his/hers?

2) Is the socially inept behavior consistent across many scenarios? Or does the person act like a buffoon a lot of the time, but then become cunning and crafty when presented with an opportunity to fulfill a selfish desire at the expense of others?

Consider socially awkward Raymond from the Everybody Loves Raymond TV series. Raymond acts like a buffoon a lot of the time, but if we look closely, we notice that Raymond can be quite cunning and crafty when he wants to be. In one episode, there was a dispute between Raymond’s wife and Raymond’s mother. The dispute caused Raymond’s wife and Raymond’s mother to compete for Raymond’s affection. Raymond enjoyed this so much that he intentionally pulled off a scheme to prolong the dispute just so that he would be showered with extra affection for awhile longer. Eventually, Raymond’s family found out what he was doing, which Ray’s brother called “taking advantage of the situation”. I do not recall Raymond showing very much remorse for what he had done, and this is not the only time that Raymond did something wicked to fulfill his selfish desires, and at the expense of others.

The story of Mike

I once knew someone named Mike who had the reputation at our school as the “creepy stalker”. Whenever he tried to make friends with female students, he would make them feel like they were being followed. Some students complained that they had to kick him out of their dorm room because otherwise he would overstay his welcome for hours. People who knew Mike well, however, testified that he was innocent. He did not mean to hurt anybody. He was just socially inept.

I did not enjoy Mike’s company very much because he was not a good conversationalist. Even when I did try to force him to talk about something interesting, he would switch from being boring to being annoying by invalidating what I was saying for reasons that did not make sense. I sat with him at mealtimes anyway because he did not seem to have that many other friends.

Two other female friends of mine did not want him around because he made them feel like they were being followed. I told him that he should apologize to them for making them feel uncomfortable, and then they would likely allow him to be their friend again. He refused to apologize, however. Based on his reasoning, if he did not intend to make them feel uncomfortable, then he should not have to apologize. He did not seem to feel remorse for causing them psychological discomfort. I told him that he should try to see things from the other person’s perspective and put himself into the other person’s shoes. He explained to me that he cannot put himself into someone else’s shoes because to do that, he would have to be able to read minds.

Mike did eventually apologize to my other two female friends, but only after they continued to shun him. It appeared that he only wanted to do the right thing when there were adverse consequences to him.

Another female student who felt uncomfortable around Mike was one of Mike’s teammates on the university fencing team. Mike eventually got kicked off of the team for making this other female team member feel like she was being stalked. Mike decided to join the fencing team at a nearby university instead. He was bragging to me about how well he was performing in the fencing tournaments after joining this other fencing team. He said that the members of this other fencing team could not see why he would get kicked off of our university’s fencing team. He did not seem to understand that the reasons he got kicked off of the university fencing team had nothing to do with his fencing ability. The reasons had to do with the well-being of one of the team members, which, ethically speaking, should be higher priority than having the best players.

Mike was gleefully telling me about how our university’s fencing team was having this “civil war” over him because some of the teammates were on his side and some were not. The fact that Mike enjoyed this discourse, of which he was the cause, was yet another manifestation that Mike was not that good of a person. Good people do not want disputes to arise because of them. Mike, in his egocentricity, seemed to enjoy being at the center of attention.

In general, I found that Mike had other issues besides just social ineptitude. He also was egocentric, judgmental and self-centered.

Not all evildoers aim to hurt someone

Have you ever heard someone say “he did some bad things, but he has a good heart?” Sometimes I wonder what exactly the standards are for what constitutes a “good heart” when someone makes this statement. I wonder if people say “good heart” simply because the person in question does not really aim to hurt anyone.

Not every bad person wakes up in the morning thinking I think I will try to hurt someone today. What he/she make think is I aim to get what I want, and I am not going to put any thought into who gets hurt in the process. If someone does get hurt, that is their problem. I will explain that I didn’t mean to and then carry on…

In the case of Mike, he did not aim to hurt anyone. Supposedly, he made females feel uncomfortable around him because he was socially inept and did not know what affect his behavior had on others. If you ask me, I think that the reason he did not know what affect his behavior had on others was that he did not care. He also figured that as long as he did not intend to make someone feel uncomfortable, he was absolved from responsibility. If he were a better person, he would not have adopted this attitude.

The story of Jeffrey

Jeffrey was another person I knew who had the reputation for being socially awkward. On a couple of occasions, he said something to me that I found to be judgmental and offensive. On one occasion, we were talking about an upcoming potluck dinner. I expressed concern that I may not have enough to eat at this potluck dinner because I was vegan and did not eat wheat. In response, Jeffrey accused me of “just going for the food”. I thought that was a mean and judgmental thing to say. The question is: did Jeffrey say this because he was socially awkward and did not know any better, or did he say this simply because he was a jerk?

I had a friend who frequently held potluck dinners in his apartment. He told me that he decided to not invite Jeffrey attend the potluck dinners anymore because Jeffrey was not bringing any potluck dishes, and was instead eating other people’s potluck dishes. My friend thought that it was unfair for me and the others to put effort into making potluck dishes while Jeffrey ate the food and brought no potluck dish of his own. Here, we can reasonably assume that Jeffrey really was an inconsiderate jerk, and not just “socially awkward”.

Bad with women? Or just a bad person?

Ever hear of men (in television or real life) who have a reputation for not knowing how to talk to women? These kinds of men are known for pissing off women left and right. Sometimes culture makes this out to be funny, presenting the image of a man having yet another interaction with a woman where he says the wrong thing at the wrong time, and then walks away with his iced coffee inverted on top of his head. Culture often believes that pleasing women is this special skillset, maybe even an art, that only the most fortunate and savviest of men have.

The truth is that being “bad with women” may be a sign that the man is actually just a bad person. Take the Howard Wolowicz character from The Big Bang Theory TV series. Howard Wolowicz likes to be a playboy, but he is pretty bad at it. We viewers are expected to laugh as he interacts with women and keeps getting rejected, and sometimes even pisses them off.

If we take a closer look, however, we see that Howard’s intentions towards women are malicious. He is a sexual predator at heart. He even gets excited at the prospect of meeting women who have low self-esteem from years of being fat and ugly because he figures that it will be easier to get them to have sex with him. We find out in one episode that he lost his virginity to his cousin. As a sexual predator, he may not be good at fulfilling his evil desires — after all, he is not “sexy” — but he still is acting on those evil desires all the time nonetheless. To put frosting on the cake, we viewers are expected to believe that the reason women do not like him is that he is physically less attractive and too dorky. In reality, women have much deeper reasons to not like him and to avoid him. He is an evil, sexually malicious creature. As I mentioned in a previous post, there are other areas of his life (besides his interactions with women) where he behaves in ways that are wrong.

So when a man is a bad man, why would we not notice how horrible he is when he is around other men? For example, when we see Howard Wolowicz around his friends Sheldon, Leonard and Raj, he seems to act like a perfectly nice person most of the time. How he treats Penny, however, is a different story. In one episode, Penny felt treated so badly by him that she punched him in the face.

For one thing, women are the primary target of sex discrimination. Therefore, when a man has sexist behavioral tendencies, it will show the most in how he treats women. Sexism can be subconscious, so many men who are sexist do not know it. They treat women with a certain kind of disrespect that they would not exhibit towards other men. Then they may wonder why they seem to always be pissing women off. Meanwhile, other men may not notice such a man exhibiting offensive behaviors because they are not the target, women are.

Another factor is that a regular heterosexual man can only fulfill his sexual desires with women. Therefore, a man who is a bad person will have a reason to harass and victimize women that he does not have to harass and victimize other men. Such a man may see women as just sexual entertainment rather than as fellow human beings.

Still another reason that a man’s evil nature manifests itself more in how he treats women is that women are more vulnerable and easier to overpower than men are. Sometimes when someone is evil, his/her true evil nature manifests itself the most when he/she is around vulnerable individuals such as women and children. Take Miss Hannigan from the film Annie. Any of us who watched the movie Annie would recall how cruel Miss Hannigan was to those orphans; but when Miss Hannigan was around adults, she generally behaved much nicer. The reason, I believe, was that she had no position of power or authority over other adults. The orphans, on the other hand, were under her power and authority. They also were smaller and easier to overpower physically. Furthermore, they had no parents to protect them, so Miss Hannigan could treat them any way she wanted, and they had little means to fight back.

Women are a vulnerable group because, like children, they are physically smaller and easier to physically overpower. They also are underrepresented in positions of political power, economic power and social power. Furthermore, they tend to be the prime target of sex discrimination in a variety of settings from the workplace to just everyday conversations. To top it off, as is discussed in this previous post on treatment of women in popular culture, women are sometimes expected to welcome any sexual attention that comes their way because it means they are “pretty”. Such expectations place women into a bad position where men can harass them without feeling any guilt.

Not all men who have bad luck with women are bad people. There are many possible reasons for why a man would have bad luck with women, sex differences being one possible reason. For example, when men are friends with each other, they do not share their emotions with each other as much as women do. Therefore, a man who transitions to being in a relationship with a woman is going to have certain things expected of him that his male friends do not expect of him, such as emotional availability. The woman may want to spend time with him and talk about her feelings with him. He may not be ready for that kind of time commitment.

Summary

A good person will genuinely care about what affect his/her behavior has on others. Even if the good person is lacking in social graces, the good person will put some honest effort into avoiding offending or hurting someone. When offense or hurt does happen, I do not think that the good person would adopt the “I didn’t mean to, so that’s your problem” attitude. The good person would feel remorse.